Computer Memory Upgrade on Asus/AMD set-up

[Cage]

I've just got into focus stacking and the program I'm using eats all of my 4GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM running @1066MHz.

My mobo is an Asus M2N68-VM with an Athlon X2 7750 BE CPU @ 2.7GHz running Windows 7 64bit and 8GB RAM capability. The mobo will run AM3 CPU's with a BIOS update.

The easy way would be to bang another 4GB kit in, but from what I've learned in the Corsair forum this can be a very hit and miss proposition, even with chips with the same revision No. Any 2 x 4GB kits I found were very exxy. I'm not even sure they will run at 1066MHz.

The other option is to swap the 7750 for an AM3 unit (from $80 for 2 cores to $150 for a 955 quad core black edition) and get some fast DDR3 RAM, around $140 for 1066MHz to $200 for 2000MHz then sell off the old CPU and RAM.

Asus only seem to go half way with their product updates, i.e. no mention of DDR3 RAM on their QVL for the now AM3/DDR3 capable mobos.

The update route seems to make sense to me if I can clarify what RAM will work in the updated mobo. I'll check in the Asus forum and maybe get an answer.

Any thoughts appreciated. When I get my head into something like this, I often have trouble seeing the forest.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day Kevin

It seems to me that this may be one case where you need to pay for some up-to-date professional assistance
While your descriptions make sense to me, it's been too many years since I allowed my MCSE certification to lapse ... thus my advice may not be the best for you

Regards, Phil

[Cage]

Thanks for the reply Phil.

I purposely made the thread a bit on the techno side in the hope that someone who is running a similar platform may have been down the same road.

Asus have released a BIOS update that brings a lot of their AM2/AM2+ boards up to AM3 speed, but in typical Asus fashion they haven't released any specs on compatible memory, well anyway I haven't found any.

I'll throw this thread in a few other forums and see what I come up with.

I also trying not to sacrifice too much RAM speed for more GB's. I think about 1333MHZ will be the max. Even 8GB at 1066 would be good.

[arthurking83]

Have to say.. I went from 4G to 8G of ram and have never noticed any difference in speed from the apps that can utilise this increase..... LR3, and more importantly IDImager(used for my catalog building).
LR feels the same.. just slow.
IDImager is my worry. Now with 8Gig of ram, I intitially thought that if I went from my original 4G to 8G, it'd run smoother. It doesn't!!
This is the only program I've ever seen use up every single bit of ram.. yep! up to about 7-8G of ram getting wasted watching this program 'not responding' again. LR does this irresponsibility thing occassionally, but I have that sussed out now, and I've never seen LR use up more than 2G of RAM.
My RAM speed is 12800 if that counts for anything too.

Everything runs fast on my PC now.. except this IDImager program.. which while it sounds like a problem.. I actually like it. The problem with it, is that I sometimes click on the link to the entire database it's built up. This takes some time for it to load all the associated thumbnails... all 192K of them. The database it's built is well over 6Gb.

If I close the program with minimal thumbnails set to load up for the next time I open the program, there is no problem with the program at all, and once opened for the first time, the next time I try to view all the images cataloged in IDImager, the program is slow, but still runs without this not responding issue. Even tho it takes a while in this not responding mode, it always recovers tho.. and I can do other tasks while IDI runs in the background.

Are you using separate scratch disks and suchlike? That is, read the files you are stacking from one HDD, separate to the OS, and even have a third separate hdd for use as a temp files/scratch disk.

FWIW, I'm running an AM3 955 black, purchased early last year now. PC ran quite speedily with all this new gear, including only one new hdd. I have more hdd's than I know what to do with, so I reused all these old drives for various storage purposes.. ie. four in the PC at once.
The biggest boost in PC processing power was in updating all those old hdd's to newer fast drives.
Sometimes, and depending on the program in use, there's no point in having all this processing power, if your data is taking a long time to go from lots'a bits on a hdd, into all that super fast ram and CPU heat pump combo!.. and back onto slow to respond hdds again! ;)

[Cage]

Interesting Arthur.

All my processing is done on one HDD, a fairly new SATA drive. I use a similar one for back-up.

I've decided to go the upgrade route. And switching to a Gigabyte Mobo. Getting info from Asus makes my head ache!

I'm also looking at the 955BE, the 555BE (2/3 the price but dual core, don't know if I'd notice any difference) and 8GB of G.Skill 12800 RAM. Co-incidental huh?

Mate, I'm wondering if your bottleneck may be in having different drives talking to each other during processing. Maybe move all the IDImager files onto the one drive? Just a thought.

Kevin

PS: And I'm sitting here wondering how to make my computer go faster, and there are thousands of Queenslanders wondering if they will have a home tomorrow.

[Cage]

Well I've bitten the bullet and ordered the new Gigabyte AM3 mobo, the Phenom 955BE and the G.Skill RAM. May look at a HD5670 GPU when the wallet recovers.

Next the fun part, the O/S install plus all the updates, plus downloading all my other programs again, unless I can suss out a way to shortcut this.

Cheers

Kevin

[WhoDo]

Next the fun part, the O/S install plus all the updates, plus downloading all my other programs again, unless I can suss out a way to shortcut this.
Why? Aren't you keeping the hard drive? Just plug it in to the new mobo and run an OS repair which should fix up the missing OS bits without messing with your programs or data. What have you got to lose except lots of work? :p

[Cage]

Waz, the 'plug 'n' go' method is very tempting, but I sort of like the idea of having my O/S on a fresh HDD with a clean registry and no left over crud.

Plus I'm hitting the Computer Fair in Newie tomorrow for a new Video Card, and from bitter experience I know how hard it is to get rid of old drivers.

The format/clean install route is a pain in the butt, but I think worth it in the long run.

Cheers

Kevin

[darrenmars]

Doesn't photoshop take full advantage of CUDA technology in the NVIDIA cards? Back when i had a PC, I was running an old workstation with a ridiculous amount of memory and a workstation graphics card. I can't remember the exact model but I know it was from the Nvidia Quadro lineup and had this CUDA technology. The point of my post is that I had run the machine after reducing my memory back down to 4GB (ditched the flakey 64bit OS in favour of a stable 32bit OS) and performance in CS3 was at least identical and arguably better than when it had 32GB. I never took a baseline because I wasn't too fussed so I'll never know for sure. Mind you it was a workstation and as such had a fair bit of CPU grunt as well.

I guess at the end of the day you need to nut out where the bottleneck is and reduce/eliminate it. I still think that machine I had could have been a lot faster with either a RAID setup or a SSD as a scratch disk. I ditched it in favour of a Mac for many reasons, the main ones being portability and the fact it was a very loud and unnecessary heater during the summer months.

[Cage]

Well it's all up and running and activated without a problem.

Only gliche was the 70mm fan on the X4 955BE heatsink. In the hot weather we had it was spinning at 6000+ RPM and screaming like a sick turbine on an A380.
Swapped it for a Noctua unit with twin 90mm fans. All I have to do is fit a couple of quiet intake fans to bump up case pressure to minimise dust intrusion.

Now I can start to think about some PP without worrying about cooking my system.

Cheers

[itybitypieces]

depending on your case i would have maybe went the nh d14 from noctura,as for installing programs , i use this website http://ninite.com/ might be what you are looking for .i just did a google search and if this was what you were looking for here are some that are probably better then the one i just recomended

http://appsnap.genotrance.com/
http://allmyapps.com/apps/top-free
http://www.freenew.net/#none


and here is 1 for anybody that reads this and has a mac
http://appbodega.com/

[Cage]

Thanks for the input IBP.

The NH-D14 wouldn't fit and even with the NH-U9B SE2 I had to move the RAM. It has made a huge difference.

All programs now re-installed and all systems are 'Go'.

Cheers